Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

  • Ascoli65 its fun you post that documentary, a minute or so before the time stamp you highlight, one of the interviewees states that he was told he was trying to challenge the paradigm and that’s why he was shut off.

    I certainly Hope to see LENR helping humans to blossom, and I'm here to help it happen.

  • Well, I think any independent observer (as Horst did) looking at the video (who has done it?) would say that it is more likely those last 10 min 50% change in level is foam.


    What you can see looks white - so if not foam then it is at least water full of bubbles - and therefore unknown what percentage of what you see is air.


    That boil-off enthalpy calculation is based on wrong evidence - the video cannot be evidence of how much water is lost in that last short period.


    Yet it is explicitly how F&P in the paper say they have judged the matter.


    THH

  • Ascoli65 its fun you post that documentary, a minute or so before the time stamp you highlight, one of the interviewees states that he was told he was trying to challenge the paradigm and that’s why he was shut off.

    Why is it fun? The entire documentary is interesting to me, not only the interview you have mentioned. However, you have to distinguish between facts and words. The first are more meaningful than the latter. The video belong to facts and the interview to words.


    It's much more fun to me that, in quoting the SFGATE article in a thread whose title speaks about videos, Shane D. skipped the only part which refers to the "1992 boil off " video and jumped directly to the Passel's sayings.

  • Sorry, I've just realized that I've linked the wrong addresses (2) and (3) in my previous posts:


    I've corrected them.

  • OK, I think we have completed our evaluation of the conclusions contained in F&P's Simplicity Paper, that we started a dozen days ago (1). I hope we now agree that both conclusions of this crucial report are wrong, since the lab time-lapse videos clearly show that:


    (a) F&P calculated the claimed x4 excess heat in the wrong way, ignoring the presence of foam in the cells;


    (b) F&P misplaced the "Cell dry" instant in Fig.8, thus deducing a non-existent phenomenon, later called HAD.


    Next questions are: How could these errors have occurred? How could these errors have been ignored by the CF/LENR community for about 30 years? Why has the evidence of these errors been rejected for almost 4 years, and even now opposed, by almost everyone here on LF?


    Well, I think that Rob psychological analysis (2) provides a good approach to find the answers. Just change the names.


    (1) RE: Where is the close-up video of Fleischmann and Pons boiling cell?

    (2) RE: ERAB panel & evidence denial

  • Why has the evidence of these errors been rejected for almost 4 years, and even now opposed, by almost everyone here on LF?

    Personally, I could not be bothered to look at the videos, it is a real pain. Since looking at them is the only way to come independently to a conclusion about foamgate I have some sympathy for everyone else.


    Except my default position not looking at it is "not sure". Their default position is "Fleischmann is a great electrochemist it is absurd to imagine he would get that wrong".


    Without going into psychology, or details, one thing is a known fact about humans:

    No matter how clever or experienced or noble - people do sometimes surprise you by having strange lapses


    F - at that point in his career, had perhaps more pressure on him to lapse than is usually the case for a famous electrochemist.


    THH

  • Except my default position not looking at it is "not sure". Their default position is "Fleischmann is a great electrochemist it is absurd to imagine he would get that wrong".

    Except that in this case many other people have used boil-off calorimetry in various experiments, including me, in Japan in an unrelated cold fusion experiment. (We also measured the remaining electrolyte on the weight scale, after stopping the boiling when about half was boiled out, so I am sure it worked.) People have been doing this for 200 years. There is no doubt it works. You or Ascoli could try it yourself and confirm that, but of could you never will.


    I will grant, it is not the most precise method of doing calorimetry, but your assertion is that people cannot tell the difference between watching 45 g of heavy water boil away and watching 11 g boil away. It is the difference between the water level falling halfway down the test tube, and barely changing at all. No matter how much foam there is, anyone could see a difference as large as that.

  • As part of my video project, I'm hoping to recreate the boil-off experiment and get a much better video documentation of it (4k, two cameras). I'm not doing the experiment itself because I'm not a scientist, so I'm partnering with someone who is qualified. If anyone here wants to produce a bullet list of requests for this experiment, I'd find it helpful and be happy to report back how much of it we can do.

  • Absolutely terrific offer Rob. I'm sure that there will be a lot of interest in that from all the team here on the forum, and from JedRothwell too

    I am still processing the thrill. It's quite an endeavour tho, starting with the specialized cells and materials it requires.

    I certainly Hope to see LENR helping humans to blossom, and I'm here to help it happen.

  • starting with the specialized cells and materials it requires.

    How specialized? I hope it is not expensive. F&P used a rather specialized cell. It was a Dewar. Half silvered for most experiments, but no silver in the boil off video tests, so you could see inside. I did a similar experiment with Ohmori in Japan long ago (which I forgot about until just now). That cell was like a retort, except the spout pointed up, like a glass teapot. You can buy something like that easily, I think.


    A regular graduated cylinder might lose a lot of droplets out the top. F&P had a narrow plug at the top which prevented that. I think a spout would be easier. If all you are trying to do is confirm that the water level can be measured with reasonable accuracy, it wouldn't matter if droplets leave. Just put the thing on a weight scale and confirm the water level measurement agrees with the weight loss. But if you want to confirm this measures the heat of vaporization, you have to keep droplets from leaving. You have to measure heat losses from the glass walls.


    A simple way to check for droplets is to put a Kleenex next to to spout and see if it gets wet.


    Perhaps a 100 ml graduated cylinder filled up to only 70 ml would not lose many droplets, and the foam would not overflow. If the foam does overflow, you have too much surfactant. You can buy a plastic cylinder for $9 or a glass one for $16, from Amazon.


    Use distilled water from the drugstore. Make life easier.



    I did rudimentary calorimetry with something like this. It was deliberately crude, in imitation of Joule's 1841 experiment. It came out remarkably accurate. Results are shown on pages 37 - 39 here:


    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreviewofth.pdf


    I can dig up the range of temperatures measured at each power level, if you want to know. I just used an average in this table. The temperatures here are call water temperature minus ambient temperature. The graph in Fig. 3 is my actual data, plus one imaginary point showing how excess heat would look. It goes right smack back to the origin (0, 0) which surprised me!


    I used an ordinary resister and a Radio Shack DC power supply with 5 fixed settings, as shown in Table 1. They used to sell them as a "universal power supply" for small gadgets, with 5 common voltages and different connectors. Sort of like this one, for $16.


    41W AC Adapter, Universal AC DC Power Adapter, AC/DC Power Supply 100-240V 50/60HZ 6V 9V 12V 2A 15V 18V 20V 24V 1.5A Adjustable Switching Adapter with 8 Tips for LED Strip Light, Camera,Router,Speaker
    41W Universal AC DC Power Supply AC/DC Power Adapter 6V 9V 12V 2000mA 15V 18V 20V 24V 24V 1500mA Switching AC Adapter with 8 Selectable Tips ➤ Product…
    www.amazon.com


    You probably have a real laboratory grade power supply.


    From this, you see that THH or Ascoli could prove or disprove their claims for ~$50 in one afternoon. But instead of doing that, they spend days, weeks even, nattering on about imaginary stuff.

  • A regular graduated cylinder might lose a lot of droplets out the top. F&P had a narrow plug at the top which prevented that. I think a spout would be easier. If all you are trying to do is confirm that the water level can be measured with reasonable accuracy, it wouldn't matter if droplets leave. Just put the thing on a weight scale and confirm the water level measurement agrees with the weight loss. But if you want to confirm this measures the heat of vaporization, you have to keep droplets from leaving. You have to measure heat losses from the glass walls.

    Jed, if you read #352 just above you will see that Rob is able to borrow an ICARUS reaction cell. No need for a teapot. And he will need a constant current PSU, not a constant voltage one. The palladium and the D2O is the most expensive part.

  • Except that in this case many other people have used boil-off calorimetry in various experiments, including me, in Japan in an unrelated cold fusion experiment. (We also measured the remaining electrolyte on the weight scale, after stopping the boiling when about half was boiled out, so I am sure it worked.)

    Except that in this case we are talking about the F&P "1992 boil off" experiment and the errors contained in their Simplicity Paper. What was done by "many other people" doesn't eliminate these errors.


    Quote

    People have been doing this for 200 years. There is no doubt it works.

    No doubts that a correct calorimetry works, but the calorimetry of F&P for the "1992 boil off" experiment is not correct.


    Quote

    You or Ascoli could try it yourself and confirm that, but of could you never will.

    As I already told you, I'll not try. We already have two videos which show what happened in the F&P "1992 boil off" experiment, which is the argument of this discussion, not my trials.


    Quote

    I will grant, it is not the most precise method of doing calorimetry, but your assertion is that people cannot tell the difference between watching 45 g of heavy water boil away and watching 11 g boil away. It is the difference between the water level falling halfway down the test tube, and barely changing at all.

    No, my assertion is that the "1992 boil off" videos show that during the final boil off period the cell contents were mostly foam, but F&P considered the density of liquid water in their calculation of the enthalpy output. Therefore F&P were wrong. Videos indisputably show that what is falling in the final boil off phase is the foam level, not the liquid one.


    Quote

    No matter how much foam there is, anyone could see a difference as large as that.

    In the case of the "1992 boil off" experiment, F&P didn't even mention the foam in their Simplicity Paper. They simply ignored the presence of foam in their cells. They have been wrong.

  • My criticisms of the Simplicity Paper are different from those raised by Morrison, because they are based on the accurate examination of the available versions of the lab videos of the "1992 boil off" experiment, which have been published on YouTube in 2009 and 2012.


    My criticisms have not yet been rebutted (in the merit) by anyone here on LF.

    Morrison didn’t have the opportunity to accurately examine the lab video. He raised his criticisms in 1993, shortly after the publication on PLA of a slightly different version of the Simplicity Paper reporting the results of the "1992 boil off" experiment. His criticisms were not entirely correct, because he got the chance to watch the lab video only once during his participation to ICCF3 in Nagoya.

  • DEBATE BETWEEN DOUGLAS MORRISON and
    STANLEY PONS & MARTIN FLEISCHMANN
    These two documents that first appeared in the Internet's sci.physics.fusion forum in
    1993. The first was written by Douglas Morrison (CERN), the second by Martin Fleischmann
    (Univ. Southampton) and Stanley Pons (IMRA Europe). Morrison wrote a critique of the article:
    M. Fleischmann, S. Pons, "Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via
    complications to simplicity," Physics Letters A, 176 (1993) 118-129
    Pons and Fleischmann respond to his critique.
    This debate refers mainly to the paper “Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O System: from
    Simplicity via Complications to Simplicity,” published in Physics Letters A. This paper is not
    available at LENR-CANR.org. However, a similar paper was later published in the ICCF-3
    conference proceedings and handed out by Fleischmann, which is available here:

    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

  • My criticisms of the Simplicity Paper are different from those raised by Morrison, because they are based on the accurate examination of the available versions of the lab videos of the "1992 boil off" experiment, which have been published on YouTube in 2009 and 2012.


    My criticisms have not yet been rebutted (in the merit) by anyone here on LF.

    Morrison didn’t have the opportunity to accurately examine the lab video. He raised his criticisms in 1993, shortly after the publication on PLA of a slightly different version of the Simplicity Paper reporting the results of the "1992 boil off" experiment. His criticisms were not entirely correct, because he got the chance to watch the lab video only once during his participation to ICCF3 in Nagoya.

    Unpopular it may be, but ascoli is exactly right. No-one seems to want to argue about foamgate.



    Except that in this case many other people have used boil-off calorimetry in various experiments, including me, in Japan in an unrelated cold fusion experiment. (We also measured the remaining electrolyte on the weight scale, after stopping the boiling when about half was boiled out, so I am sure it worked.) People have been doing this for 200 years. There is no doubt it works. You or Ascoli could try it yourself and confirm that, but of could you never will.

    I know there was discussion in ICCF24 and elsewhere of a good lab rate experiment. Are you saying that this boil-off experiment is that? And could you provie a few more details of what exactly was replicated? (e.g. what voltage rail did your CC supply have).


    If it is replicable and doable I suggest we all push to make it a definite evidence expriment. Boil-off could be reliable - it is juts that a lot of things need to be checked. The issue with F&P was that they confused foam (or very bubbly water) on a video as 100% water.


    Obviously - foam or v bubbly water has a different density from normal water.


    Thanks, THH


    PS - relevant to this is how did you check input enthalpy? If done as F&P the power in varies very greatly over the boil-off period.

  • For a boil-off experiment:


    (1) Don't try to measure how much liquid is in the cells by looking and boiling/foamy liquid level! It does not work. If you measure enthalpy though the whole experiment from start (liquid in known) to end (liquid left measured with supply off and no bubbles) visual inspection would be OK.


    (2) Given that most of the enthalpy out is phase-change - be careful you do not get entrainment. As Jed says a long chimney (aphasia - forgotten the proper name) would be fine.


    (3) Measure input current and voltage over time (e.g. with logger or storage scope). Use a simple CC source (R + dc 100V supply) and you only need to measure voltage - current can be calculated (but measure it anyway as a check). Integrate power in for input enthalpy.


    (4) Consider NOT using a CC supply. If you used a constant POWER supply you would get roughly constant boiling and the boil-off phase would be more accurate and you can measure from start to end. Constant power could be approximated with R + dc PSU (roughly CC) and altering one of the other manually from time to time to keep power same. You can log voltage and current (or voltage over cell and PSU voltage) over time so it doe snot matter how accurate is the manual adjustment. You can still allow higher intensity at boil-off, a high PSU voltage will give that automatically as with F&P. But the higehr power earlier allows you to get accurate boil-off estimates in a short time. Note atht a long time will make unquantifiable enthlapy losses from container much larger.


    (5) If a long low current phase is though necessary use following protocol:

    (a) do it

    (b) top up with water to known mark on cell (make sure that there is enough room in cell for deposits on electrodes not to reduce available volume from that measured at start)

    (c) do a fast constant power boil-off as above

    (d) again as above, use CC to allow power to increase at end - if this is thought necessary to make the claimed results happen. Should be safe as long as - no entrainment (check chimney stays empty of water/foam) and current/voltage are recorded at short enough intervals to integrate the power.


    Summary - make the obvious and easy change from F&P needed to measure boil-off accurately.

  • Jed, if you read #352 just above you will see that Rob is able to borrow an ICARUS reaction cell. No need for a teapot. And he will need a constant current PSU, not a constant voltage one. The palladium and the D2O is the most expensive part.

    Apologies - I did not see this.


    The merit of the boil-off experiment is that it can provide an uncontrolled excess power estimate. The Icarus cell was maybe used for controlled calorimetry - more accurate, but with a different and more complex set of issues.


    However - you could use Icarus for first principles boil-off enthalpy estimation?

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